


A Strange and Terrible Saga

by RobberBaroness



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Bets & Wagers, Bikers, Gen, Parallel Universes, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27089974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: Can a man outrace the devil when enough is on the line?  Wally is going to find out.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	A Strange and Terrible Saga

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faceofstone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/gifts).



“My godfather, Harry Truman. And his friend, Cooper.” Wally ran through the list in his head, names he’d heard his parents dithering over, names that carried with them a sense of loss and hopelessness. “And Cooper’s friend, Diane. And Laura Palmer.”

The faces of the creatures in the Black Lodge Motorcycle Club remained stoic and impassable. What Wally wanted was not immediately dismissed as outrageous, nor did they smile and attempt to assure him that he was bound to win his wager. The only facial expression anyone showed was a quick twitch of the lip revealing dirty teeth; it might have been an acknowledgement, or it might have been an animalistic reflex in response to being challenged.

“And if you lose the race?” asked a voice that echoed like a shout inside a cave.

“If I lose…” Wally gripped the handles on his bike; his folks would never have wanted him to take a chance like this, but he wasn’t going to give it the go-by. “If I lose, one of you snakes gets my body. I don’t plan to lose.”

He’d laid it all down now, lives for lives, a fair enough wager for a gang that valued bodies more than souls. The crossroads seemed to stretch forever uninterrupted in each direction, with the Douglas-firs lining them like cones at a driving lane. The night was silent except for the distant screeching of owls and a distorted sound coming from one of the BLMC bikers that might have been a nasty chuckle.

“You’re on,” said the voice, and that meant it was get-down time.

Wally tore off, and the screech of the tires from the bikes around him sounded like a chorus of witches’ cackles. He paid that sound as little mind as possible, keeping his eyes focused on the road ahead of him. This wasn’t time for spitting dust or lifting off the ground or any kind of fancy tricks- this was a time for speed and staying steady on two wheels. He just had to reach the spot where the forest met the hills and he would win back all the lost souls he’d bargained for.

The first biker who matched his speed had black hair that streamed out behind him like a meteor’s tail and a denim jacket covered in fringes. There were circular cracks all over his visor, like the pockets on the moon that gave it a screaming face. The road was steaming all around him, leaving long dented trails where the chopper drove. It veered to the right and Wally just missed getting smashed into spray paint on the side of the highway. He swung his bike around to avoid the crash and pushed on ahead while his opponent lost time trying to get back on track. Wally hadn’t gotten stacked up yet, and he didn’t plan to.

The second rider to catch up to Wally’s bike carried with him a rumble that shook the earth. His bike seemed to jump ahead rather than ride steadily, leapfrogging from one blast radius to the next. The rider was encased in a sleep silver jumpsuit with a gleaming helmet whose movements suggested piloting a test plane more than driving a motorcycle. The air rippled with each roar of his engine, the sound almost rising to the level of music, though it was a sort of music no one would voluntarily listen to. The thud of the wheels landing and the howling wind threatened to knock Wally’s bike to the ground, and it took every muscle in his body to keep it upright and moving. He could see the hills up ahead, and that was enough to push him into the final stretch, keeping on a straighter track than his silver-clad enemy, and somehow he not only kept pace but outpaced him.

Wally’s final rival to the finish line was covered in rubber and metallic studs, and his hair frizzed and crackled with static charges. Sparks scattered across the road like stars on a black sky, and Wally felt their sting biting into him through his leather. He clung to the handles even as his body was burning with pinpricks of pain, and he prepared to cross the finish line dead. That would be alright by him. They couldn’t collect on their price if his body was pierced and fried through.

But he wasn’t dead when he crossed that line, and his closest pursuer came in about a foot’s length behind him. That was it, then- he’d flown it through to endsville. He had won. Though the rest of the BLMC came pulling up towards him with murder in their owl eyes, there was nothing they could do to rewrite the night. He’d passed by all his rivals- the comet, the sonic blast, the lightning strike- and they'd given their word as to the prize.

“Congratulations,” spoke one- it could have been any of them. “We hold to our deals. Drive on into the heart of town and you’ll find everyone you’re looking for. But I should warn you- it may not look quite the way you remember.”

Wally had known it was too good to be true, but he kept an ice-cold face as he met the thing’s eyes.

“What trick do you think you pulled? Come on, what’s the pitch?”

“No tricks. No lies. You’re in a world where Laura Palmer survived her attack, where Dale Cooper escaped our grasp, where Harry Truman lived to be a grandfather, where Diane Evans didn’t get locked away on our side of the curtain. But of course, that isn’t the world you know.”

Wally nodded. It made a twisted sort of sense, he supposed.

“I dig you. What am I supposed to find in Twin Peaks, then?”

The demon biker shrugged.

“I wouldn’t know. Not even whether or not Andy Brennan and Lucy Moran had a son. Change one thing, the world changes. Change so many things, there’s no telling what might happen.”

Wally didn’t flip. He didn’t scream out that he had been born under a bad sign. He just nodded again, acknowledging that it might have been a bum steer but it was fair enough. If he’d ridden on into a new world, there was nothing to do but keep riding. He packed his grip and clung to the road, his home, his dharma, and rode ahead into Twin Peaks to see what he would find.


End file.
